Unless a local tavern owner in a political pickle is promising free beer, it's pretty hard to fill a committee room for anything at City Hall, or so said Ald. Terry Witkowski, marveling at the crowd that turned out for a hearing on public art Tuesday.

"There is an arts community in Milwaukee and it's alive and well," he said.

And it made a difference.

Later that morning, the Milwaukee Common Council voted 12-2 to approve Janet Zweig's design for E. Wisconsin Ave. She will create artworks that will be stationed on lamp posts and will house animations created from old-fashioned flap signs, once common in train stations.

Perhaps most swayed, though, was the art community itself. There have been many discussions of late, large and small, organized and not, about the need to support the creative community. That itself is not new, but Tuesday it seemed as if the "cultural coalition" everyone's been imagining came into existence. A diverse group of people aligned to do something.

Dave Fantle of Visit Milwaukee, the main proponent of the Bronze Fonz, and Mike Brenner, who closed his art gallery in protest over Bronzie, were on the same team this time. Artists, professors, filmmakers, civic leaders, bloggers, urban planners, art collectors and people who just heard about it on Twitter or the radio were all there.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't stop smiling all day.

Still, a word of caution. Valiant and episodic efforts have been made for public art here before, and until Milwaukee has a cohesive, long-term plan for public art and a qualified, paid, public art administrator, we will continue to stumble into these kinds of controversies.

The Zweig project nearly fell apart because it was no one's job to ensure that it didn't. Many cities our size and even smaller have both a plan and a person, someone who speaks the language of art, politics, engineering and finance.

A failure to connect

The moment when a project's design goes to City Hall is a critical one. This is precisely the make-it-or-break-it point when the "Blue Shirt" came apart at the seams.

In the case of the Zweig project, the artist's ideas were presented at the 11th hour by a well-intentioned city engineer with predictable results.

Say what you will about Ald. Bob Donovan and his storming out of the committee meeting. He had every right to be angry. He was effectively being asked to rubber-stamp art no one had told him a thing about at a time when city funds are tight.

One blindsided politician is all it takes for things to unravel, as they did on April 1 before the Public Works Committee. The danger, then, is that people get polarized fast. They get dug in before the damage can be undone.

Which is why Tuesday's victory is such a rare and wonderful one.

The Zweig project had been managed so beautifully to that point, largely because a Minnesota-based public art professional, Regina Flanagan, had been hired to shepherd it. Her contract had expired and the city hadn't gotten around to rehiring her, so Flanagan wasn't around when she was most needed.

But her charge was limited.

A project-by-project approach won't work. It is telling that, briefly, unbeknown to anyone, a busy corner downtown was being eyed for both the Bronze Fonz and Zweig projects.

What is needed is someone who can keep an eye on the overall, including city, county and private projects. We need a leader and champion, someone who is part advocate and part bureaucrat. We need someone familiar with the dialogue around public art internationally, who is exploring new kinds of ideas, including both temporary and permanent projects. We need someone who can forge collaborations between architects and artists, and who can ensure that the community is engaged in meaningful ways.

What we have, instead, is a community that's known nationally for ineffectual public art and that comparatively spends little on public art.

A thick master plan for public art was published about a decade ago and has gathered dust at City Hall since. Flanagan published another study in 2004, as part of the Wisconsin Ave. project. It, too, sits.

So, many in this newly congealed community of arts advocates have asked: What's next?

My advice, first, is to thank the elected officials who approved the Zweig project.

You'll need that political goodwill for my second suggestion: Put public art at or near the top of the list of priorities.

It makes a case for itself (much like the Milwaukee Art Museum does for architecture), and it is more for the community as a whole than almost any other art form.

It's an excellent place to start.

Remain in touch with Mary Louise Schumacher's coverage of art and urban design on Twitter (@artcity) and Facebook. E-mail her at mschumacher@journalsentinel.com.

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Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.

E-mail Newsletter

Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.